


Quotidian

by englishable



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-14
Updated: 2015-12-14
Packaged: 2018-05-06 17:51:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,884
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5426213
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/englishable/pseuds/englishable
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Neither of them keeps a particularly normal schedule, so it’s fortunate that they live in the city that never sleeps: even if the furthest they usually go is a diner with a jukebox that doesn’t work anymore. Bruce, Natasha, one-shot.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Quotidian

...

The diner’s jukebox is an old Wurlitzer Statesman 3400, with all its original wooden trim and records, and would be considered mint condition if it weren’t for the softball-sized hole in its front.

There used to be a corresponding hole in the opposite wall too, which the blast from an energy gun had created on its way through; but that got plastered over once the owner figured out how to classify  _“large-scale alien invasion”_  and  _“collateral damage via giant green rage monster”_  on her insurance claim. The front window, its frame twisted out of shape by a monumental pair of shoulders, has since been replaced with shatter-proof perspex. The jukebox could’ve likely been replaced too, except it weighs about seven hundred pounds and is bolted to the floor.

Thus, in a roundabout way, Bruce Banner (”HULK SAVES FAMILY RESTAURANT IN NEW YORK SHOWDOWN” reads a framed newspaper clipping) can’t help but feel like he owes the place his patronage.

“…Seriously? They should be giving you vouchers.” Natasha speaks between mouthfuls of waffle. “And I think the jukebox thing adds character. There’s a laundromat owner on East 41st Street who asked if he could mount a Chitauri helmet on the wall above their register.”

Bruce scrapes orange marmalade out of its plastic portion cup and spreads it over his toast. “I thought SHIELD confiscated everything.”

“They did.” She wears a sleeveless cotton blouse, despite the cool summer night, her arms muscled like braided wire and poised up on their elbows. It also reveals a pitted, new-formed bullet scar on her left shoulder, where the Winter Soldier (Sergeant James Buchanan Barnes, that is) had shot her several months ago. “Munitions wanted all the armor for research, but I gave him back the head that had still been inside it – he said his wife did taxidermy as a hobby. I think they put it on a plaque and everything.”

“I’m guessing they haven’t had much trouble with armed robbery.”

“I’m guessing not.” She licks syrup off her thumb. “So, think of it that way. You gave them a souvenir.”  

The diner is about five blocks from Stark Tower, its interior all polished chrome and rounded-off angles. A sign by the entrance reads ‘NO SHIRT, NO SHOES, NO FOOD, NO BOOZE,’ next to where ponderously large slices of chocolate mousse cake and lemon meringue pie rotate inside a lighted glass case.

They come here on weeknights, mostly, at odd hours when both of them ought to be asleep. There is no point, Natasha has explained, in calling yourself an American, if you don’t occasionally exercise your inalienable right to eat breakfast whenever you damn well please. 

She always orders strawberries in syrup and dredges them over her waffles; they usually end up using the little metal pitcher as a prop, along with the salt and pepper shakers, to illustrate – among other things – the phenomenon of electron repulsion, the order of vehicles in a military convoy, the decks of a trading vessel on its way down the Suez Canal, and the landmarks of St. Stephen’s Basilica and the State Opera House in downtown Budapest.

(On occasion some of the salt will spill, and they will each fling a pinch over their left shoulders: as if the Devil were really to be found anywhere so localized and external.)

Bruce likes the place because – despite those unmistakable head-shaped dents in its ceiling, despite the newspaper, despite all the classified files flooding the information superhighway these days – nobody has ever recognized him here. 

That, and they have endless free refills of coffee.

“…Oh, four cups a day is nothing.” He pours some into a chipped ceramic mug. Their waitress has simply taken to leaving a pot of it there beside him, black as a cauldron. Cut-out paper witches and orange streamers for Halloween decorate the diner’s walls. “I had a professor of theoretical physics in graduate school that could put away ten before lunch.”

“To – what?” There’s always a slight hitch to Natasha’s smiles, an uneven puckering there at the left corner of her mouth. It gives them a swift, slant-wise, providential quality. “To test the theory of relative velocity time dilation? If he moved fast enough, everything else would seem to slow down?”

“No, but one day he gave a lecture on closed quantum systems while wearing a pair of clown shoes.” Bruce puts his face down into the coffee’s steam for a moment. “He said physical matter was so insubstantial and full of – full of gaps, I guess, that you needed the extra surface area to keep yourself from falling through the earth’s crust. He had to take the rest of the semester off.”

“You know, there are days when I can sympathize with that.”

“Which part? The clown shoes or the existential terror?”

“Yes.”

Natasha spears a cut piece of waffle on the tip of her knife, wrist precisely arched as she does, and slides it quickly off the blade with her teeth. 

(She employs this ambush tactic whenever she eats alone, or at least away from formal company, as though she half-expects the plate to be snatched at any moment. In her purse she saves all the packaged soup crackers, the after-meal mints, peppermint candies from a dish beside the register.

Bruce never says anything about it. Some habits, he knows, are harder to break than others.)

“…So here’s something I’ve been meaning to ask,” she tells him, another time. They have walked here through a lightly-falling December snow. Melting flakes still cling to the curls of her hair. “Why’d you end up in Kolkata? I mean, we traced you to British Columbia after Harlem, and then somebody spotted you in Anchorage, but next thing we heard you were at the Halida Dock Complex. What sent you there?”

“Oh. Well, I’d always wanted to do medical work there, and the people who needed it most probably wouldn’t ask to see my license.” Bruce looks over at the window, at his reflection floating in its dark glass, because he decides he has been staring at the snowflakes in her hair for much too long. “And fireflies might’ve had something to do with it.”

“What?”

“The fireflies, in southeast Asia. I’d, uh, I remembered that they can do synchronous flashes.”

“Meaning?”

“They all light up at once, together. Thousands of them. It’s a kind of communal display.” He has no more coffee, so he risks looking back at Natasha again. She is staring at him with that singular, interrogation room concentration, as if she will have to recite this conversation from memory later on. Another habit, probably. “It looked like – have you ever seen the Pleiades before? The star cluster?”

“I’ve studied navigation, anyway. It comes in handy when your GPS goes down along with the plane. It’s in the Taurus constellation, isn’t it?”

“Yes. The fireflies looked a little like that – I’d read about it in a biology textbook, back when I was in high school about a million years ago.” He scratches at his cheek. “It sounds pretty stupid, but it kept me moving.”

“Well.” This new smile still pulls to the left, but it is broader, more open. She has many different kinds. “Any reason to keep moving is usually good enough.”

(And Bruce finds himself noticing other things about her lately, things he has never paid attention to before, as though there has been a shift in his vision – a sort of change, like colors in a kaleidoscope rearranging to form new patterns. 

So here’s what else he observes:

There is a round birthmark on her right cheek, as though she’s just rested it against the tip of a paintbrush. One of her pinkie fingers is crooked, the sign of an improperly or badly-healed break. She never sits with her back to the door and carries a pistol at the small of her back, or else in a holster beneath her jacket. Her eyes are a pale green flecked through with brows and grays, like an uncut gemstone.

All of this together allows Bruce to see that he is in terrible, terrible trouble.)

“…You don’t have to do any of this, you know,” he finally tells her, one night.  

Natasha glances up. She has just ordered a slice of angel food cake, topped with whipped cream, and is holding out a second fork so that they can split it between them. The tree outside their window – they always take a booth in the corner, it is always available when they come here  – is just putting out new spring leaves.

“I can have them box up your share, if you don’t feel like eating it right now,” she says. “Did you want the rice pudding instead?”

Bruce allows his gaze to travel past her, to that blasted jukebox in the corner: too heavy to move, too troublesome to replace, bolted down by strange sentiments and ideas that carry no value of their own. 

“I mean about coming here. With me.” He closes his hands around one another, presses them against his mouth to think. “You really don’t need to.”

There is more he’d like to tell her: that they are teammates now in any case  _(“I’ve seen worse”),_  that he holds nothing against her and hasn’t for a very long time now  _(“No, we could use a little worse”)_ , that being close to him will probably have no effect on the technique they’ve been working on  _(“Hey Big Guy”)_ , and that she should not have to consider him her responsibility  _(“I swear, on my life, I will get you out of this”)._

But he never gets around to any of this, because Natasha speaks first.

“True, but I still want to.” She tucks into the angel food cake with her fork, swiping up some cream as well. “Is that okay?”

A band of streetlamp light falls across her forearm, and a newer scar that is raised there. He’d stitched that one up himself, several months ago, at her behest, because she had been sitting there and had trusted him to do it.

Then she looks at him, and Bruce remembers suddenly how young she is: not even thirty, not even old enough to have lines around her eyes, despite the scars and the holstered gun and the food she keeps hoarded away because starvation is an excellent motivator and the fact that she is always preparing herself to be shot in the back.

_(“Your life?”)_

Something bites hard at his heart. 

What an ass he is, Bruce thinks. What an idiot, to believe this was only ever about him: that he’s the only one on their team who people should know to stay away from. 

“I’m sorry,” he says. “I didn’t mean to – ”

Natasha leans across the table and sticks the cake right into his open mouth. Bruce is so shocked that he closes his mouth around it. The taste is achingly sweet on his tongue, weightless as air, and a dab of whipped cream transfers from her hand to the tip of his nose.

“Pretty good, huh?” she asks, drawing out the fork again. “Once you give it a try.”

“Mmm.” Bruce swallows, nods, and somehow finds that he is still capable of blushing like a sixteen-year-old as he rubs a napkin over his face. “Yes.”

 …


End file.
